MiltonToday received the following letter from Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada's Cathy Orlando and Donna Freedman
On July 15, Canadians in most provinces will receive again something that’s sure to put smiles on their faces: payment from the government of another quarterly Carbon Rebate.
The Rebate is part of Canada’s program to put a fee on carbon pollution and give the revenue from the fee back to households. The additional income will come as relief to those who are feeling the economic pinch of higher food prices.
Several factors are pushing up food costs. One is a phenomenon referred to as “greedflation.” During the pandemic, supply chain issues and other factors increased costs for retailers, who then passed those costs on to their customers. The pandemic and the problems it caused are essentially over, but instead of dropping prices, corporations decided to leave prices where they were so they could pocket the windfall profits.
Greedflation can be fixed with a government crackdown on companies that indulge in price gouging. However, there’s another problem driving up food costs that can’t be solved that easily — climate change.
As our climate heats up, food production is detrimentally impacted by more prolonged heat waves, longer droughts, extreme rainfall, and unnatural weather patterns such as the January cold snap that decimated fruit trees in the Okanagan. Did you know that heat disrupts the interaction between pollinators and plants that account for one third of the world’s crops?
Bottom line: As climate change worsens, crop yields drop, pushing up prices.
Frederic Neumann at financial services company HSBC, recently told the Financial Times, “It’s easy to shrug off individual events as being isolated, but we’ve just seen such a sequence of abnormal events and disruptions that, of course, add up to climate change impact.”
In the long term, reducing the inflationary pressure of climate change requires reducing the heat-trapping emissions that come primarily from the burning of fossil fuels.
The vast majority of economists agree that the most efficient and effective method to reduce emissions is to put a price on carbon and rebate the people. Canada leads the way globally with a carbon pricing policy that currently sets the price at $80 per tonne and will increase to $170 per tonne by 2030 with much bigger Rebates in 2030.
Does this increase energy costs? Yes, and that’s why the Canadian government is taking the substantial revenue from the carbon fee and giving it to people in the form of quarterly payments that are now being distributed. In addition to covering higher energy costs, the Rebate will also help many Canadians deal with higher food costs.
Canadians living outside major cities get a 20% top up and farmers and small businesses also get Rebates.
Canada’s Carbon Rebate came about largely because citizens engaged our government and generated the political will to enact it. Between 2010 and 2018, volunteers with Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada (CCL) collectively lobbied on Parliament Hill thirteen times and held 793 meetings with parliamentarians. CCL Canada generated nearly 3,000 letters to editors, opinion pieces, editorials and articles on the climate crisis and carbon pricing during that time.
It will take more than Canada’s efforts, of course, to stop climate change. Currently, over 60 countries are pricing pollution from fossil fuels and there is a campaign to encourage other countries to price carbon pollution:The Global Carbon Pricing Challenge. Canada is calling on all nations to use carbon pricing as a central part of their climate strategies. Citizens' Climate Lobbyists in over 50 countries globally are building political will for pricing fossil fuel pollution in their countries too.
Slowing and reversing the impact of climate change on food production is a long-term endeavor, and it will be a while before people will see relief in the form of lower food prices. In the meantime, consumers will get help with their food bills from the Canada Carbon Rebate. It’s that rare cure that treats both the disease and its symptoms.
Canadians wishing to show support for their carbon rebate can send a letter to their parliamentarians here: https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/affordable/
Cathy Orlando is National Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada and Director of Programs at Citizens’ Climate International.
Donna Freedman is Group Leader of the Milton, ON Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada